Download or read book Evolution of Sex Determining Mechanisms written by James J. Bull and published by Benjamin-Cummings Publishing Company. This book was released on 1983 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Evolution and Diversity of Sex Ratio written by Dana Wrensch and published by Springer. This book was released on 1993-06-30 with total page 634 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Darwin first raised the question of sex ratio evolution, and saw it as both important and enigmatic. He was, however, unable to make much headway with the problem and declared it a puzzle for the future. This particular future arrived about 60 years later, when R. A. Fisher (1930) pointed out that under autosomal inheritance half of the genes passed to zygotes in any generation come from males and half come from females. Fisher noted that this one-mother/one-father symmetry generates frequency dependent natural selection on sex ratio, resulting in an evolutionary equi librium in which half of the reproductive resources are devoted to daughters and half to sons. Although widespread interest in sex ratio as a phenotypic trait did not occur for another 30 years, it is difficult for us to overestimate the impor tance of Fisher's brief and characteristically cryptic remarks. Almost all of the innovations in thinking about sex ratio can be viewed as alterations of one or more implicit assumptions in Fisher's scheme. The present book on insect sex ratios is testimony to the fruitfulness of his original ideas and of their descendants.
Download or read book Sex Ratios written by Ian Hardy and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sex ratios, the proportions of males and females in any given species, are important in evolutionary and behavioural ecology. This volume explores the context to and methods for many aspects of research on sex ratios, and will be an indispensable reference for all those working in this area.
Download or read book Evolution s Rainbow written by Joan Roughgarden and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-09-14 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this innovative celebration of diversity and affirmation of individuality in animals and humans, Joan Roughgarden challenges accepted wisdom about gender identity and sexual orientation. A distinguished evolutionary biologist, Roughgarden takes on the medical establishment, the Bible, social science—and even Darwin himself. She leads the reader through a fascinating discussion of diversity in gender and sexuality among fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals, including primates. Evolution's Rainbow explains how this diversity develops from the action of genes and hormones and how people come to differ from each other in all aspects of body and behavior. Roughgarden reconstructs primary science in light of feminist, gay, and transgender criticism and redefines our understanding of sex, gender, and sexuality. Witty, playful, and daring, this book will revolutionize our understanding of sexuality. Roughgarden argues that principal elements of Darwinian sexual selection theory are false and suggests a new theory that emphasizes social inclusion and control of access to resources and mating opportunity. She disputes a range of scientific and medical concepts, including Wilson's genetic determinism of behavior, evolutionary psychology, the existence of a gay gene, the role of parenting in determining gender identity, and Dawkins's "selfish gene" as the driver of natural selection. She dares social science to respect the agency and rationality of diverse people; shows that many cultures across the world and throughout history accommodate people we label today as lesbian, gay, and transgendered; and calls on the Christian religion to acknowledge the Bible's many passages endorsing diversity in gender and sexuality. Evolution's Rainbow concludes with bold recommendations for improving education in biology, psychology, and medicine; for democratizing genetic engineering and medical practice; and for building a public monument to affirm diversity as one of our nation's defining principles.
Download or read book Evolution and Diversity of Sex Ratio written by Dana Wrensch and published by Springer. This book was released on 1993-07-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Darwin first raised the question of sex ratio evolution, and saw it as both important and enigmatic. He was, however, unable to make much headway with the problem and declared it a puzzle for the future. This particular future arrived about 60 years later, when R. A. Fisher (1930) pointed out that under autosomal inheritance half of the genes passed to zygotes in any generation come from males and half come from females. Fisher noted that this one-mother/one-father symmetry generates frequency dependent natural selection on sex ratio, resulting in an evolutionary equi librium in which half of the reproductive resources are devoted to daughters and half to sons. Although widespread interest in sex ratio as a phenotypic trait did not occur for another 30 years, it is difficult for us to overestimate the impor tance of Fisher's brief and characteristically cryptic remarks. Almost all of the innovations in thinking about sex ratio can be viewed as alterations of one or more implicit assumptions in Fisher's scheme. The present book on insect sex ratios is testimony to the fruitfulness of his original ideas and of their descendants.
Download or read book In the Light of Evolution written by National Academy of Sciences and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia of the National Academy of Sciences address scientific topics of broad and current interest, cutting across the boundaries of traditional disciplines. Each year, four or five such colloquia are scheduled, typically two days in length and international in scope. Colloquia are organized by a member of the Academy, often with the assistance of an organizing committee, and feature presentations by leading scientists in the field and discussions with a hundred or more researchers with an interest in the topic. Colloquia presentations are recorded and posted on the National Academy of Sciences Sackler colloquia website and published on CD-ROM. These Colloquia are made possible by a generous gift from Mrs. Jill Sackler, in memory of her husband, Arthur M. Sackler.
Download or read book Modern Phylogenetic Comparative Methods and Their Application in Evolutionary Biology written by László Zsolt Garamszegi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-07-29 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Phylogenetic comparative approaches are powerful analytical tools for making evolutionary inferences from interspecific data and phylogenies. The phylogenetic toolkit available to evolutionary biologists is currently growing at an incredible speed, but most methodological papers are published in the specialized statistical literature and many are incomprehensible for the user community. This textbook provides an overview of several newly developed phylogenetic comparative methods that allow to investigate a broad array of questions on how phenotypic characters evolve along the branches of phylogeny and how such mechanisms shape complex animal communities and interspecific interactions. The individual chapters were written by the leading experts in the field and using a language that is accessible for practicing evolutionary biologists. The authors carefully explain the philosophy behind different methodologies and provide pointers – mostly using a dynamically developing online interface – on how these methods can be implemented in practice. These “conceptual” and “practical” materials are essential for expanding the qualification of both students and scientists, but also offer a valuable resource for educators. Another value of the book are the accompanying online resources (available at: http://www.mpcm-evolution.com), where the authors post and permanently update practical materials to help embed methods into practice.
Download or read book Developmental Plasticity and Evolution written by Mary Jane West-Eberhard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-13 with total page 815 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive synthesis on development and evolution: it applies to all aspects of development, at all levels of organization and in all organisms, taking advantage of modern findings on behavior, genetics, endocrinology, molecular biology, evolutionary theory and phylogenetics to show the connections between developmental mechanisms and evolutionary change. This book solves key problems that have impeded a definitive synthesis in the past. It uses new concepts and specific examples to show how to relate environmentally sensitive development to the genetic theory of adaptive evolution and to explain major patterns of change. In this book development includes not only embryology and the ontogeny of morphology, sometimes portrayed inadequately as governed by "regulatory genes," but also behavioral development and physiological adaptation, where plasticity is mediated by genetically complex mechanisms like hormones and learning. The book shows how the universal qualities of phenotypes--modular organization and plasticity--facilitate both integration and change. Here you will learn why it is wrong to describe organisms as genetically programmed; why environmental induction is likely to be more important in evolution than random mutation; and why it is crucial to consider both selection and developmental mechanism in explanations of adaptive evolution. This book satisfies the need for a truly general book on development, plasticity and evolution that applies to living organisms in all of their life stages and environments. Using an immense compendium of examples on many kinds of organisms, from viruses and bacteria to higher plants and animals, it shows how the phenotype is reorganized during evolution to produce novelties, and how alternative phenotypes occupy a pivotal role as a phase of evolution that fosters diversification and speeds change. The arguments of this book call for a new view of the major themes of evolutionary biology, as shown in chapters on gradualism, homology, environmental induction, speciation, radiation, macroevolution, punctuation, and the maintenance of sex. No other treatment of development and evolution since Darwin's offers such a comprehensive and critical discussion of the relevant issues. Developmental Plasticity and Evolution is designed for biologists interested in the development and evolution of behavior, life-history patterns, ecology, physiology, morphology and speciation. It will also appeal to evolutionary paleontologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and teachers of general biology.
Download or read book Sexual Selections written by Marlene Zuk and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-06-04 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book the author gives an eye-opening tour of some of the latest developments in our knowledge of animal sexuality and evolutionary biology. It exposes the anthropomorphism and gender politics that have colored our understanding of the natural world and shows how feminism can help move us away from our ideological biases. As she tells many amazing stories about animal behavior--whether of birds and apes or of rats and cockroaches--the author takes us to the places where our ideas about nature, gender, and culture collide. (Midwest).
Download or read book The Theory of Sex Allocation MPB 18 Volume 18 written by Eric L. Charnov and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first comprehensive treatment of sex allocation from the standpoint of modern evolutionary theory. It shows how the determination of sex ratio, resource allocation to sperm versus egg within simultaneous hermaphroditism, and the evolution of sex reversal can he explained as examples of a single process. The genetical theory, developed mostly with graphical arguments, also specifies when hermaphroditism and dioecy are themselves evolutionary stable. The work balances theory with field and laboratory research, providing critical tests of the theory by empirical studies of sex ratio in parasitoid wasps and mites, sex reversal in shrimp and coral reef fish, and allocation of resources to pollen versus seeds in higher plants. In addition, the author oilers an encyclopedic review of the field and laboratory work of other scientists, reviews many as yet untested hypotheses in sex allocation, and points toward numerous plant and animal systems that hold promise for future tests.
Download or read book Sexual Conflict written by Göran Arnqvist and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2005-07-25 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book demonstrates that , despite a shared genome, conflicts between interacting males and females are ubiquitous, and that selection in the two sexes is continuously pulling this genome in opposite directions." --Cover.
Download or read book Primates of Gashaka written by Volker Sommer and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-11-23 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Gashaka Primate Project has grown into one of the largest research and conservation activities in West Africa. At present, it keeps going on the initiative of the editors of this volume and their academic home institutions.The appearance of this volume marks the 10th anniversary of the Gashaka Primate Project
Download or read book Sex Allocation written by Stuart West and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-28 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent decades have witnessed an explosion of theoretical and empirical studies of sex allocation, transforming how we understand the allocation of resources to male and female reproduction in vertebrates, invertebrates, protozoa, and plants. In this landmark book, Stuart West synthesizes the vast literature on sex allocation, providing the conceptual framework the field has been lacking and demonstrating how sex-allocation studies can shed light on broader questions in evolutionary and behavioral biology. West clarifies fundamental misconceptions in the application of theory to empirical data. He examines the field's successes and failures, and describes the research areas where much important work is yet to be done. West reveals how a shared underlying theoretical framework unites findings of sex-ratio variation across a huge range of life forms, from malarial parasites and hermaphroditic worms to sex-changing fish and mammals. He shows how research on sex allocation has been central to many critical questions and controversies in evolutionary and behavioral biology, and he argues that sex-allocation research serves as a key testing ground for different theoretical approaches and can help resolve debates about social evolution, parent-offspring conflict, genomic conflict, and levels of selection. Certain to become the defining book on the subject for the next generation of researchers, Sex Allocation explains why the study of sex allocation provides an ideal model system for advancing our understanding of the constraints on adaptation among all living things in the natural world.
Download or read book The Evolution of Cultural Diversity written by Ruth Mace and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-09-16 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virtually all aspects of human behavior show enormous variation both within and between cultural groups, including material culture, social organization and language. Thousands of distinct cultural groups exist: about 6,000 languages are spoken today, and it is thought that a far greater number of languages existed in the past but became extinct. Using a Darwinian approach, this book seeks to explain this rich cultural variation. There are a number of theoretical reasons to believe that cultural diversification might be tree-like, that is phylogenetic: material and non-material culture is clearly inherited by descendants, there is descent with modification, and languages appear to be hierarchically related. There are also a number of theoretical reasons to believe that cultural evolution is not tree-like: cultural inheritance is not Mendelian and can indeed be vertical, horizontal or oblique, evidence of borrowing abounds, cultures are not necessarily biological populations and can be transient and complex. Here, for the first time, this title tackles these questions of cultural evolution empirically and quantitatively, using a range of case studies from Africa, the Pacific, Europe, Asia and America. A range of powerful theoretical tools developed in evolutionary biology is used to test detailed hypotheses about historical patterns and adaptive functions in cultural evolution. Evidence is amassed from archaeological, linguist and cultural datasets, from both recent and historical or pre-historical time periods. A unifying theme is that the phylogenetic approach is a useful and powerful framework, both for describing the evolutionary history of these traits, and also for testing adaptive hypotheses about their evolution and co-evolution. Contributors include archaeologists, anthropologists, evolutionary biologists and linguists, and this book will be of great interest to all those involved in these areas.
Download or read book Temperature Dependent Sex Determination in Vertebrates written by Nicole Valenzuela and published by Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edited by the world's foremost authorities on the subject, with essays by leading scholars in the field, this work shows how the sex of reptiles and many fish is determined not by the chromosomes they inherit but by the temperature at which incubation takes place.
Download or read book Dragonflies and Damselflies written by Alex Córdoba-Aguilar and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-08-28 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dragonflies and Damselflies documents the latest advances in odonate biology and relates these to a broader ecological and evolutionary research agenda. Despite being one of the smallest insect orders, dragonflies offer a number of advantages for both laboratory and field studies. In fact, they have been crucial to the advancement of our understanding of insect ecology and evolution. This book provides a critical summary of the major advances in these fields. Contributions from many of the leading researchers in dragonfly biology offer new perspectives and paradigms as well as additional, unpublished, data. The editor has carefully assembled a mix of theoretical and applied chapters (including those addressing conservation and monitoring) and achieves a balance of emerging and established research topics, providing suggestions for future study in each case. This accessible text is not about dragonflies per se but an essential source of knowledge that describes how different sets of evolutionary and ecological principles/ideas have been tested on a particular taxon. It will therefore be suitable for graduate students and researchers in entomology, evolutionary biology, population and behavioural ecology, and conservation biology. It will of course be of particular interest and use to those working on insects and an indispensable reference text for odonate biologists.
Download or read book Sixty years of discovering scolytine and platypodine diversity written by Anthony I. Cognato and published by PenSoft Publishers LTD. This book was released on 2010-09-17 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stephen L. Wood (1924?2009) was the leading authority of bark and pinhole borer beetle systematics (Scolytinae and Platypodinae) in the latter half of the 20th century. He published over 100 taxonomic papers including monographs and a worldwide catalog. His research advanced the understanding of Scolytinae and Platypodinaeÿ diversity and influenced several generations of bark beetle systematists. This Festschrift honors Dr. Wood?s 60 years of Scolytinae and Platypodinae systematic research. The 20 contributing authors represent worldwide taxonomic expertise that report on a range of topics from biology to phylogeny. These studies concern species from all major faunal regions. Twenty-three new taxa are described and five patronymics are named. Most taxonomic treatments include identification keys. A brief biography accompanied by a list of Dr. Wood?s publications is included.
